Kazuki Guzmán
Tools from ElsewhereTools From Elsewhere reimagines the traditional Japanese tawashi brush through hybrid forms that combine shuro (windmill palm) fiber with elements of Western-style brooms. While tawashi are ubiquitous in Japan, used daily in kitchens and workshops, they remain largely unfamiliar in the West. By merging these two familiar cleaning tools, the work produces objects that feel subtly out of place in both contexts. My connection to shuro is rooted in personal memory. Shuro trees lined the back of my grandparents’
home, and as a child I was struck by their tropical, palm-like appearance without fully understanding what they were. That moment, when something familiar reveals itself as foreign, continues to inform this work.
Each piece functions as a tool, yet resists immediate recognition. The tawashi becomes a handle, a head, or a structural element, while the broom form is interrupted or reoriented. These objects exist between
categories: neither fully Japanese nor Western, neither brush nor broom. Instead, they operate as cultural translations—everyday forms displaced just enough to become alien. The shuro components are produced in collaboration with craftspeople at Takada Tawashi in Japan and assembled with newly fabricated elements, bringing together traditional material knowledge and contemporary reinterpretation.